even books

So, Sunday past we hit the macaroni for our first ever segment on FBi’s Canvas, entitled, rather imaginatively, ‘Even Books on FBi.’ Our host was Jesse Cox and he was super (he was also wearing a great sweater, which those in radio land sadly missed out on). We talked about books and then Jesse interviewed Marieke Hardy for us. Here are some funny things we said:

About our ‘sting’, which is radio speak for some kind of jingle: “AIR HORNS!” *giggles*

Our parties: “Everyone in the room has at least one topic of conversation to conversate about … hence the need for lubrication.”

On pretending we are urban rappers: “We wanted to make the B Club [a literary salon in London] more street, more gutter yknow.”

On one of the smartest women in America: “Tina Fey: a rollicking ride.”

One thing you should probably never suggest on a book club segment: “If you can’t be bothered to read, watch YouTube instead.”

A phrase Virginia Woolf has probably never heard used in relation to her work: “Sensorial zest.”

And some excellent things Marieke Hardy said about her book, You’ll be Sorry When I’m Dead:

On stories like the one that takes place in a Swinger’s Club: “They’re not sexy-sex, Nikki Gemmell stories…”

On baring all: “There’s more raw honesty than dick jokes.”

On allowing those mentioned an unedited ‘right-of-reply’: “That felt like the braver part of the book. Letting go of the reins.”

On the ‘real’ Marieke: “For funny stories, there is a point where you have to be a caricature.”

On her highschool zine: “We nearly broke the photocopier in the library with Sex Bus!”

We unfortunately didn’t get to ask her about season two of her black comedy TV series Laid, which is in-production. If we did, we hope she would’ve said this: “Your box set is in the mail.”

You can listen to the on-demand stream here.

And as for some books we’d like to recommend? On air, we only touched on a few. Ok, two, to be exact. But here are a few more, in random order. Don’t like random? Just you wait till we are such mega-gods of radio and book reviews that we put them in Dewey Decimal AND alphabetical order. Then you’ll be sorry.

Bossypants (Tina Fey) - A spiky blend of humour, introspection and critical thinking from one of the most beloved comedy writers of our time. Pretty much non-stop zingers. You’d have to have been in hiding not to have noticed all the press about it a few months back.
There but for the is by Scottish writer Ali Smith, a lady who looks a little bit like a friendly goblin. It’s about a man called Miles who attends a dinner party and then halfway through, as the hostess torches the crème brulees, disappears into the spare room and refuses to come out. He leaves a note: Fine for water but will need food soon. Vegetarian, as you know. Thank you for your patience. The hosts kind of seem like assholes but still, it’s hard to know what anyone would be like in that situation. They find a random number in his phone book of a lady called Anna who he’d known, barely, twenty years before, so they call her and ask her to come help coax him out. It becomes about how one event can fuse together many stories, which is an Ali Smith trademark. Her Hotel World is about how various women – a maid, a ghost, an eccentric hostel visitor, a homeless lady – are brought together over one night. The Accidental is about one family’s very hot sticky summer spent in the country, and an accidental house guest they acquire, and how she turns all their lives upside down. Smith is a deft and beautiful writer, given to gusts of sensory perceptions and Madeline cake moments – one bite leading to pages of memories and thoughts. You can see a lot of Virginia Woolf in her style, which is very vivid. There but for the came out 2011. (AB)
The Life (Malcolm Knox) tells the story of Dennis Keith (DK), a 58 year old former surf champion who now suffers from OCD and lives with his mum in her nursing home, too fat to sit on a surfboard let alone stand on one. He’s a fictional character, but quite heavily based on real world surf champion Michael Peterson, a famously volatile surfer who was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. It’s a story of self destructive genius, and it’s also a great snapshot of Australia at a particular time, when seaside towns changed under the hands of developers.

People can’t help but compare it to Tim Winton’s Breath, but in stark contrast to Winton’s ornate descriptions of ‘men dancing upon waves’, The Life is written in the language of the line-up: ‘I done this’, ‘yous done that’.

The story is told in the third person and then the first, jumps around between past and present, is crammed with half-sentences, broken sentences, with repetition and colloquialisms. At first everything feels a bit wrong: too choppy, too abrupt, but after a while you go with it, stop noticing, and the words take you somewhere else. A bit like when you first try reading Irvine Welsh. Highly recommended. (AF)
Revolutionary Road is a novel by Richard Yates and is thought of by many as an American classic. It follows the marital breakdown of April and Frank Wheeler, and by extension the breakdown of the American Dream. In the movie directed by Sam Mendes the pair are played by Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio, who are both appropriately attractive and troubled (also, Titanic 2.0!). It has been described as American Beauty circa 1955 and it certainly shares some themes: the disillusionment with the suburban idyll, a vitriolic but also somehow loving marriage, a generation of children who suffer as a by-product of their parent’s decisions. The only problem I had with it was that Yates seemed to dislike his own female character, April – she was beautiful but ultimately not understood. It was very much a man’s tale. Still, fifty years later, it remains a searing and prescient portrait of an America in decline. (AB)
Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) is one of the classics I’m embarrassed to have never got around to reading, and the reason I’m finally doing it now is that I can’t stand to read the book after I’ve seen the film (and I do really want to see the film). So I began with a resigned ‘this will be good for me’ sigh. But happily, I’m just loving it to death. The incorruptible Ms Eyre herself isn’t in the least bit annoying, the conversations between characters are often profound and frankly it’s making me want to be a more clean-living, virtuous person. (AF)

Curse of the Wolf Girl is the follow up to Lonely Werewolf Girl, both by Scottish writer Martin Millar, who looks more like a grumpy elf. While rather silly, it’s lots of fun. The heroine is a snarly but beautiful werewolf warrior called Kalix, and it’s all about her and her messed up royal werewolf family, plus some fire elementals obsessed with fashion, and an overweight or maladjusted human or two. Neil Gaiman rates Millar’s work and so do I. (AB)

I will also admit to this week buying the first instalment in the Game of Thrones saga by fantasy heavyweight George R.R. Martin. And so bid adieu to any spare time I may have had over the next two centuries or so. (AB)

And I’m looking forward to reading A Spectacle of Dust, Pete Postlethwaite’s autobiography, not just because he had a “face like a f-ing stone archway”. (AF)

That’s it! Tune in next time for a back-to-back recitation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, in Dutch-Swahili.

+ + even books + +

So, it’s pretty obvious we love reading books at the Even Books HQ. But we are not ignorant; we know books are not born in cabbage patches. So we were very excited to hear about this talk as part of Sydney Design 2010. It’s called Why we love making books: ideas about unfettered self-expression and will feature the lovely Rainoff boys, Suzanne of Boccalatte Press, Kernow Craig of the Rizzeria and Blood & Thunder, Joseph Allen Shea from Izrock and Monster Children, and Johanna Featherstone of Red Room Co. It’s on next Monday at Berta in the city; but we were impatient so we pestered some of the panel members for an early insight into their book-making minds. Here is the first installation thanks to Suzanne Boccalatte.

The description of the event asks the question: ‘What do you think when you hear the word ‘book’?’ What comes to mind for you?
SB: Sensuality, touch, ink, pages turning. In the hand, a personal space. Sex, basically, sex.

What was the first book that made a big impact on you, either visually or story-wise?
SB: I grew up with TV, so I can’t honestly remember childhood books I owned. But my mother devoured books and had some ancient copies (nineteenth century) copies of Dickens novels. They were green cloth with gold embossed on front, complete with picture plates (which were etchings in those days). I became obsessed with books much, much later in life and now I buy far too many.

What led you to starting Boccalatte?
SB: I am a self-taught graphic designer. I was working many moons ago in education and I was getting work designed by someone else, and I thought, hey I could do that. So I sent myself on a night course or two and learnt how to use design programs. It started from there. I become single minded and wanted to learn how to. I needed a business names and I thought, why not my name, it seemed more authentic than other names I was thinking up at the time.

The publications at Boccalatte range from childrens’ books (Fair Skin Black Fella) to art journals (News From Islands) and catalogues (Gallery A; I’m Worst at What I Do Best) and cultural compendiums (the Trunk Books). How does each book come about? And what is the first step you take when conceptualising their creation? Do you have a favourite area to work in?
SB: I have great, great clients in fact. Someone once said, that clients need to be smarter than you are and that’s what I seek out. I’m the dumb one in the equation. But as a designer you have to be dumb because questions give you the answers. And questions are what makes a good designer over a mediocre one and only can clients give answers. So I like to ask a lot of questions even before I start. Another nice quote from Einstein, “Highly developed spirits often encounter resistance from mediocre minds.” My favourite area is compelling cultural content— mainly arts and social interests and working with thinking, creative clients.

The talk seeks to explore, ‘ideas about unfettered self-expression’. Is self-expression ever really unfettered? What constraints do you frequently encounter when making books?
SB:Trunk Books is our only ‘self published’ book, so we had no parameters, that’s where the unfettered comes in. I bankrolled the book, so that was my biggest constraint, as print in Australia is way expensive.

The Sydney Design book is one of my current favourite works, we convinced Powerhouse Museum to do something unique and less ephemeral, no designer wants to see their work on the recycling heap. And we can’t really justify throw away brochures anymore. Information is readily available on iPhone apps, so the book had to be totally beautiful and pick-upable and we wanted people to keep it too. Our suggestion was a classic Penguin paperback and we commissioned writers and photo essays and I think it’s really worked. People are talking about it and that is a good thing.

Are you acquainted with the other bookmakers on the panel?
SB: Yes the lovely Johanna and I are collaborating together on other projects; poetry meets imagery. I love what Joseph does and he submitted some of his artists for Trunk Book Vol 1. He also introduced me to rest of panel. What an amazing bunch of creative and passionate souls. I love it.

In your spare time (if you have any!), what do you like to read? Where is your favourite reading spot? And what do you most frequently drop on the pages of your books?
SB: I don’t watch TV, that helps. I read read read. Now more than ever before.
I love a self-help books (true), non-fiction (not biographies), short stories (Carver is my favourite at the minute, as is A.M Holmes and Roald Dahl) and I am in love with McSweeneys books, in fact anything Dave Eggers does it fine by me).

I have about 20 books on the go at the moment.

And I am writing now too. I always thought I couldn’t write, being visual and all, but I tried it recently in the guise of a creative writing workshop and I loved it. Duck to water. The secret is to relax with it. Like all creativity really, drawing, writing, making — it’s a wonderful combination of trust, relaxation and enjoying what you do — it is often easier than you think. The trust allows you to get into “the zone” (and allowing yourself to get there is often a matter of giving yourself permission to do so). Well that’s what I’ve learnt anyways. I think it was Stephen King that said writing is like sex, you need to relax, not think and let nature takes its course. I like that.

I’m nearly finished writing a fairy tale. Now I just have to illustrate it, design it and publish it …

My fave reading spot is the lounge with my dog at feet. And I am very careful not to drop anything on the pages of my books, nor do to I fold corners back on pages. Books are for keeps!